Recreational Reading

Well, I survived.. Some points of emphasis:

• Lake water isn’t good to drink. Try to avoid it, M’kay.
• The name of the event was The Elysian Rookie’s Triathlon. Note that apostrophe in there, it’s possessive — like, say, a bar sponsor — and has nothing to do with the quality of expectations of the field.
• Navigate by things that are really tall and easy to find. For instance, if you are nearly dead from exhaustion, very close to the surface of the water, looking at some shore line under a steel grey sky, and attempting to see through goggles that have a fine mist of fog on the inside, it might be a good idea to know which direction you want to go in without much real sensory input. Don’t navigate by something like a tree because when push comes to shove all trees look the same.
• If you don’t have any experience with open water swimming, get some. The more, the sooner, the better.

Summary

There are no results posted anywhere that I can find. I might be wrong, please correct me if so. For reference, Last year’s male winner finished in 51:27. I crossed the line in 1:11 something. There are no splits, speeds, transition times, or heart rate data.

Course Details

The race is sprint distance with 0.4 mile swim leg (roughly 600M), a 8 mile bike leg, and a four mile run. The swim leg is an out and back that begins on a sandy beach rounds three pontoon boats and returns. Transition 1 is in the parking lot of the beach area. The bike is an out and back on a gently rolling course. There are three or four rises with elevation changes of perhaps 50 to 70 feet. Transition 2 is in a different parking lot. The run leg is an out an back on a rail-to-trail which is flat as a pancake.

The swim leg

Before the start, we had wandered out into the water a bit. The beach was sandy for about five feet, then it got a bit rocky for about ten or fifteen more feet, then there was a weed bed which eventually disappeared as the depth of the water increased. The water itself was murky green, but it’s a lake — such is life. We didn’t do a swimming warm up, which might have revealed some things about open water swimming that I did not know.

The race start was delayed 30 minutes because the registration process was taking longer then expected. In the mean time, it rained on us. The were two starting flights. The solo men went first followed after five minutes by the women and the teams. People lined up across the entire beach for the start; they were spread out over perhaps 100 feet or so. I lined up about five feet behind this group quite a ways to the outside. The gun went off, and I counted to three the ran into the water.

I managed about five freestyle strokes when I realized the problem. When I put my head down in the water, I couldn’t see anything except floating green bits. I couldn’t tell anything about my swim position or my direction. I had traveled about 15m when I rolled over onto my back for the first time. I looked back to see how far I had gone was astounded to see several people swimming directly behind me. How in the hell did that happen? So I yelped a couple of times and tried to get out of the way. Effectively that was the end of my freestyle efforts. I did try it again later for a couple more strokes, but it just wasn’t in the cards. So, the swim was almost completely modified backstroke with some side stroke mixed in.

I swam further then I really had to because I wasn’t able to navigate well and somewhere along the way my goggles fogged over. Once I made it round the pontoons, I was having a hard time convincing myself that I was going the correct way. I knew that I was generally headed the correct direction, within ninety degrees or so. I couldn’t see any features of the beach. It was just a blur. Luckily there was a roof of a shelter house that was distinguishable so I made my way toward it.

I was deathly afraid of standing up to soon, getting stopped then being unable to get started again; so I swam until my hand literally touched the sand of the beach. When I stood up it was in about 18 inches of water. It didn’t even come up to my knees. It must have been comical to the spectators. I took a deep breath, sighed it out, and moved to the transition area to get started on the bike. It had taken about a century to finish, but it was over.

Tags: Racing, Results, Rookie's Triathlon, Sprint Distance, Triathlon